our authoress) breaks loose in terrible force. The reproach which Tom
Tulliver had coarsely thrown in Philip's teeth, that he had taken
advantage of Maggie's inexperience to secure her affections before she
had had any opportunity of comparing him with other men, turns out to be
entirely just. Stephen is a mere underbred coxcomb, and is intended to
appear as such (for we do not think that the authoress has failed in any
attempt to make him a gentleman); his only merit, in so far as we can
discover, is a foolish talent for singing, and, except as to person, he
is infinitely inferior to Philip. But for this mere physical superiority
the lofty-souled Maggie prefers him to the lover whom she had before
loved for his deformity; and the passion is represented as one which no
considerations of moral or religious principle, no regard to the claims
of others, no training derived from the hardships of her former life or
from the ascetic system to which she had at one time been devoted, can
withstand. Here is a delicate scene, which is described as having taken
place in a conservatory, to which the pair had withdrawn on the night of
a ball:--

Maggie bent her arm a little upward towards the large half-opened rose
that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm?
--the unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled
elbow, and the varied gently-lessening curves down to the delicate
wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm
softness?

A mad impulse seized on Stephen; he darted towards the arm and
showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.

But the next moment Maggie snatched it from him, and glanced at him
like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.

"How dare you?" she spoke in a deeply-shaken, half-smothered voice:
"what right have I given you to insult me?"

She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the
sofa panting and trembling.[1]

[1] iii. 156.

We should not have blamed the young lady if, like one of Mr. Trollope's
heroines, she had made her admirer feel not only "the beauty of a
woman's arm," but its weight. But, unwarned by the grossness of his
behaviour on this occasion, she is represented as admitting Stephen to
further intercourse; and, although she rescues herself at last, it is
not until after having occasioned irreparable scandal. A good-natured
ordinary novelist might have found a